Supreme Court dismisses Ayangma lawsuit against school board

EDITORIAL STAFF
The Guardian

A judge of the P.E.I. Supreme Court has dismissed a discrimination suit brought against the province’s French School Board and one of its former superintendents by well-known litigant Noel Ayangma.

In a decision handed down earlier this week, Justice Wayne Cheverie ruled that Ayangma had failed to meet the burden of proof in this case and awarded the defendants their court costs on a partial indemnity basis.

Ayangma had alleged his equality rights, guaranteed under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, were violated by the board and its then-superintendent Gabriel Arsenault when they refused to hire him as either a full-time teacher or a principal. He claimed to have been discriminated against based on grounds of race, national or ethnic origin, colour or age and/or qualifications.

Ayangma had sought general damages, special damages, punitive damages, damages for the loss of opportunity, as well as pre-judgment and post-judgment interest together with his costs.

The case dates to the early 1990s.

Starting in 1991 the French School Board held four competitions for the position of principal at l’école François-Buote. Ayangma was interviewed for three of the four competitions, but was not included in another. Within the same time frame there were also numerous teaching positions with the board for which Ayangma sought employment. He received two part-time contracts, but otherwise was unsuccessful in obtaining permanent full-time employment.

Ayangma commenced the current action in November 1998, but it did not go to trial until this year because time was required for parallel matters to be resolved by the P.E.I. Human Rights Commission.

Cheverie noted there were numerous decisions emanating from the Human Rights Commission which were challenged by way of judicial review in the Supreme Court. Those matters took years to reach their ultimate conclusion.

Cheverie noted that according to court records Ayangma has commenced at least 31 actions since 1993, 19 of which were in the General Division and 12 in the Small Claims section.

In this current case Cheverie reviewed the School Act, the collective agreements in place at the time and the board’s hiring policy.

He said he was unable to conclude Ayangma’s rights had been infringed by the defendants in their application of any of the above.

“Ayangma was hired in two successive years by the board but was not hired on a permanent basis, not because of any of the enumerated grounds in his claim, but because he did not perform well in the interviews. His qualifications on paper represent only part of the hiring process. If they were determinative of the issue, there would be no need for interviews. Such is not the reality because any reasonable employer would want to probe behind the qualifications on paper, and this can only be done via a face-to-face interview.”